New bike study measures where rubber meets road

Advocacy group says high number shows that Chicago needs more protected bike routes

February 27, 2011|By Jon Hilkevitch | Getting Around

Though it's no secret that Chicago has been cranking as fast as it can to emerge as a more bicycle-friendly city, a new study for the first time puts numbers on where the rubber meets the road.

The on-street biking hot spot of Chicago is at 640 N. Milwaukee Ave., a residential and commercial area between Erie and Ohio streets near the Kennedy Expressway. That's where a high of 3,121 bicyclists were counted on a random September day in 2009 as part of the Chicago Department of Transportation's first bike-count study, which will be released Monday.

Three thousand-plus bikers over 24 hours is a big, big number. Look at it this way: Bicyclists accounted for 22 percent of all traffic passing by that location on Milwaukee Avenue, according to the study. The average daily motor vehicle traffic count there was 11,117 in 2006. The 22 percent bike share casts a large shadow over a citywide average of less than 2 percent bikes on the road.

The number of bikes counted dropped to 2,083, still a respectable 16 percent bicycle-mode share, when a second count was conducted at 640 N. Milwaukee as the weather turned colder in November 2009.

"Those numbers are pretty incredible," said Ron Burke, executive director of the nonprofit Active Transportation Alliance. "It's a function of having a bike lane there, population density and a community where biking is extremely popular."

The bike counts were conducted at 26 locations citywide on weekdays in the summer and fall of 2009 using automated pneumatic tube devices designed to count bicycles but not motorized vehicles. All except two of the locations are marked with on-street bikeways.

"These are numbers that you wouldn't have seen a few years ago," CDOT spokesman Brian Steele said. He credited the city's recent push to increase bike lanes by 8 miles each year.

Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel has said he thinks Chicago could do even better. Emanuel said one of his top transportation priorities will be to build 25 miles of new bike lanes annually.

The data from the study, which will be conducted annually as part of Chicago's Bike 2015 master plan for bicycling (bike2015plan.org), will be used to determine where to invest next in creating bike lanes across Chicago, Steele said.

The Bike 2015 plan's two top goals are to increase bicycle use, so that 5 percent of all trips of less than five miles are by bicycle; and to reduce the number of bicycle injuries by 50 percent from current levels.

The plan also proposes a 500-mile bikeway network that connects within a half-mile of every Chicago resident. Today, Chicago has more than 100 miles of on-street bike lanes and more than 155 miles of signed bike routes.

There's a lot of room for improvement to get more people out of their cars, at least for some short trips, and onto bicycles. Overall, bicycles make up less than 2 percent of all vehicles on Chicago streets, according to CDOT.

"The study confirmed what we thought — that Chicago is seeing growing bike traffic, even though the mode share on some streets is relatively small," Steele said.

More than 200 bicyclists were counted daily at 17 of the 26 locations studied. Additional locations where higher numbers of bicyclists were recorded include 1325 N. Wells St., 1616 N. Milwaukee Ave., and 2710 S. Halsted St., the study found.

No doubt, bike lanes attract bicyclists, as the study demonstrated a correlation between biking infrastructure the city has put in place and the high number of cyclists on those routes. All the high-count locations are along city-designated bicycle routes that are marked with either on-street bike-only lanes, combination bus-bike lanes or as a shared route for vehicles and bikes (depicted by bike symbols and chevron markings on the pavement).

Then it's not surprising that at 2985 E. 130th St., which is not on a designated bike corridor, only 21 cyclists were counted on a single day in September 2009. The city has proposed adding a bikeway on 130th.

But the fewest cyclists, a total of 10 in a single day in May 2009, were recorded at 8216 S. Damen Ave., which is on a marked bike lane corridor. The low number of riders suggests that some stretches of roadway, even where improvements have been made, are for various reasons still not attractive to bicyclists, often because of safety concerns.

"When you have a lot of cars moving fast, and cars parked as well, it's often not the best conditions for cycling," said Burke, of the Active Transportation Alliance, which strives to promote a safety-focused utopia where drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians all get along.

He pointed out that even with the CDOT study, there still are no comprehensive data on bicycling rates in the city. U.S. census data do show, however, that the number of biking-to-work trips doubled in the Chicago area, from about 0.5 percent to about 1.1 percent from 2000 to 2008. But there are no clear numbers on nonwork-related biking trips, which are expected to be significantly higher than work-related trips, Burke said.

The growing popularity of cycling throughout the city reinforces the need for more bike lanes and more protected bike lanes, he said.

"Some roads in Chicago are clearly not suitable for cycling," Burke said, "but the CDOT study shows that people are (nonetheless) biking on those roads too."